What Does Matthew 25:42 Mean?
For I hungered, and you gave me no food; I thirsted, and you gave me no drink;
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink:THE KEY
The hungry person’s need is presented as a need Jesus himself receives.
THE MEANING
Jesus identifies himself with the hungry and thirsty person before you; their bodily need is not separate from his presence. Recognition becomes concrete in what is given, or withheld, to sustain a body. The absence of food and drink is real deprivation, not simply a failure of feeling.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that honoring Jesus can be separated from responding to the material need of the person before you.
THE ROOT
ἐδώκατε
edōkate
GROWS FROM
δω-/δο- (dō-/do-), the root in δίδωμι (didōmi)
to give, grant, or bestow
“gave” in this verse is edōkate. The verb carries the ordinary force of giving or granting, and its word family also names the gift and the act of giving. Here the missing gift is not an abstract kindness: food and drink are the provision left ungiven.
ALSO GROWS
dosis: a giving; a gift
δόσις
The related noun makes giving itself visible as an act, sharpening the verse’s focus on what the hungry and thirsty person does not receive.
dōrea: a gift; a free gift
δωρεά
This related word for a gift shows the same giving-root taking form as something received; here that concrete gift of provision is withheld.
THE PATTERN
Recognition of the divine becomes visible in whether material need receives concrete provision.
Is it not to break your bread for the hungry, and to bring the wandering poor into your house? When you see the naked, cover him, and do not hide yourself from your own flesh.If a brother or sister is naked, and left without the nourishment of the day, And one of you says to them, Go in wholeness, be warmed and filled, but you do not give them what the body needs. What is the profit?Whoever has the world's means of living, and gazes upon his brother in need, and shuts his inner parts away from him, how does the love of God remain in him?THE THREAD
And one of you says to them, Go in wholeness, be warmed and filled, but you do not give them what the body needs. What is the profit?Matthew’s “gave” and James’s “give” are forms of δίδωμι (didōmi), meaning “to give.” James makes the same failure concrete: words of warmth and fullness cannot replace the provisions left ungiven.
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